[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 04 September 2017 06:00.
Background Briefing recently interviewed Johathan Taplin about his book, Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermine Democracy, and his op-ed at The New York Times, Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks.
Some highlights: The New America Foundation funded a group called The Open Markets Group, which was headed by a guy named Barry Lynn; and they were the most important group of scholars looking at monopoly in America. When the EU sanctioned Google with a 2.7 billion dollar fine, The Open Markets Group put out a statement applauding the EU and saying American anti-trust regulators should follow their example. Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, who provides most of the financing for the New American Foundation, was incredibly angry about this and essentially told the leader of New America, Ann Marie Slaughter, that she had to get rid of the Open Markets Group. She then wrote Barry Lynn an email saying that they had to leave by September 1, and essentially fired them. This is exactly the kind of political pressure that Google plies all over the world in terms of not just academic institutions, but think tanks and others in order to keep the political narrative in their favor and not have people who oppose them.
They pay off academics and think tanks, getting them to write favorable articles (totaling a hundred from each) about Google and denying their monopoly. This is how Google curries influence by dominating the communications channels of Washington D.C.
Eric Schmidt, who is the biggest funder of the New American Foundation and who is one of the top executives at Google, was the number one visitor during the Obama administration. He was logged in more times visiting the White House than any other single person in the entire eight years of the administration.
Google’s regulatory capture: not only was Schmidt the most frequent White House visitor, more than any other CEO, by a long shot. But then Schmidt was able to put people from Google into the various agencies in the Obama administration. So, the person who ran the Patent Office was formerly the person who ran Google’s patent practice; the person who was the Assistant Attorney General for anti-trust in the Obama administration was the person who had been Google’s anti-trust attorney. Google had people high-up in The Federal Communications Agency. It was pernicious, it was everywhere…
One could say “Eric Schmidt is a liberal” and “he’s helping Hillary Clinton”, but literally the day after Clinton lost he was out there communicating with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the hopes of getting in bed with Trump. Not only did he extend invitations to them to come to his conference in Italy; but he also went to the White House and railed on about how Trump was going to be a great help to the economy with his new initiatives; so, its very clear that he has very little political conscience what-so-ever; he’s just going to go where the money is.
People from all sides are recognizing the Google has too much money and power to frame narratives, to shape and influence culture; its platforms such as Facebook and Youtube are not only the way 3/4 of Americans get real news, but also conduits of propaganda: e.g., Steve Bannon and the Mercers used market targeting in their campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton, used social media very skillfully with fake news, used Russian bots to amplify their effect. An interesting note along with that, the intelligence community observes that Eric Schmidt’s daughter worked for SCL, the company that controlled Cambridge Analytica - the company that Mercer owns and that Steve Bannon’s on the board of.
They couldn’t have done what they did if there hadn’t been these two open platforms, Facebook and Youtube, which you could totally manipulate; there was nobody at the control of these platforms to block fake news in favor of Trump. However, there is no pornography on Youtube, which means that Youtube has very sophisticated technology which could filter out fake news, propaganda, etc., if desired.
Google’s market capture is profound, its users provide content and profiles (which marketers value, of course) which competitors cannot match. Google is not just a virtual monopoly, not just one of the most wealthy companies, it is the richest company and perhaps the most powerful monopoly ever. More:
New York Times, “Is It Time to Break Up Google?”, 22 Aug 2017:
By Johathan Taplin
In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.
They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.
We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about “the curse of bigness” were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson’s counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right.
While Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator — and instead advocated breaking up “bigness,” he made an exception for “natural” monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have one or a few companies in control of an industry.
Could it be that these companies — and Google in particular — have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market’s demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?
Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications.
In 1895 a photograph of the business district of a large city might have shown 20 phone wires attached to most buildings. Each wire was owned by a different phone company, and none of them worked with the others. Without network effects, the networks themselves were almost useless.
The solution was for a single company, American Telephone and Telegraph, to consolidate the industry by buying up all the small operators and creating a single network — a natural monopoly. The government permitted it, but then regulated this monopoly through the Federal Communications Commission.
AT&T (also known as the Bell System) had its rates regulated, and was required to spend a fixed percentage of its profits on research and development. In 1925 AT&T set up Bell Labs as a separate subsidiary with the mandate to develop the next generation of communications technology, but also to do basic research in physics and other sciences. Over the next 50 years, the basics of the digital age — the transistor, the microchip, the solar cell, the microwave, the laser, cellular telephony — all came out of Bell Labs, along with eight Nobel Prizes.
In a 1956 consent decree in which the Justice Department allowed AT&T to maintain its phone monopoly, the government extracted a huge concession: All past patents were licensed (to any American company) royalty-free, and all future patents were to be licensed for a small fee. These licenses led to the creation of Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and many other start-ups.
True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability. And Google’s route to dominance is different from the Bell System’s. Nevertheless it still has all of the characteristics of a public utility.
We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.
It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.
It’s not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in “supernormal returns on capital” at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, “it has become increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant.”
There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition — Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat.
The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations.
The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google’s YouTube to free ride on the content produced by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous. But that’s preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.
Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900.
I’m under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump’s inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.
Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.” We ignore his words at our peril.
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 03 September 2017 07:39.
Newsweek, “Charlottesville’s Alt-right Leaders Have a Passion for Vladimir Putin”, 16 Aug 2017:
The alleged ties between the administration of President Donald Trump and Russia are currently the subject of intensive media scrutiny. But perhaps less well known are the connections between a Kremlin ideologue described as “Putin’s brain” and key members of the U.S. alt-right and white supremacist movement, including those behind the Charlottesville protest.
Alexander Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist and former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016. Dugin supports Orthodox Russia’s role as a bulwark against what he has portrayed as the decadent forces of the liberal West.
Amongst Saturday’s headline speakers was Richard Spencer, who claims to have invented the term “alt-right,” and has disseminated its white nationalist ideology via his National Policy Institute think-tank, as well as a network of websites and publishing ventures.
Spencer has not disguised his fondness for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, describing the country as the “sole white power in the world.” In May, he led a smaller protest in Charlottesville, in which torch wielding white nationalists chanted “Russia is our friend.”
Neo-Eurasianist ideologue Alexander Dugin sits in his TV studio in central Moscow on August 11, 2016. Francesca Ebel/AP
In 2014, Spencer invited Dugin to an international far-right conference he planned to hold in Hungary, however international sanctions prevented Dugin attending and Hungarian police raided the meeting. Dugin has since become a frequent contributor to Spencer’s AltRight.com website, and has also contributed to his online journal Radix. Spencer has returned the favor, penning an article for Dugin’s Katehon website.
Spencer’s ex-wife is Nina Kouprianova, a tireless promoter of Russian nationalism and self-described “Kremlin troll leaders” who writes under the penname Nina Byzantina. She is also Dugin’s English translator.
Matthew Heimbach, co-founder of the white supremacist Traditional Workers Party, also attended Saturday’s rally and is a big fan of Putin.
“I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now,” he recently told Business Insider. “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination.”
In 2015, he led a rally at which Russian and Confederate flags were flown alongside each other.
And, for good measure, here’s Heimbach with the Novorossiya flag, and leading a rally with both Confederate and Russian imperial flags: pic.twitter.com/5mHjHisfr7
12:26 AM - Jan 5, 2017
Heimbach, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the “face of a new generation of white nationalists”, has made several trips to Europe to meet the leaders of far-right parties, and at the official launch of the Traditional Workers Party in 2015 Heimbach hosted a Skyped-in congratulatory speech from Dugin.
And one more shot: Heimbach holding both a Dugin book and a neo-Confederate “League of the South” flag. ht @JvanDijkS pic.twitter.com/aY0KfVEhyS
6:41 PM - Jan 5, 2017
The following year he planned his first trip to Russia for the far-right World National Conservative Movement conference, which was ultimately postponed.
Infamous former KKK leader David Duke also made an appearance at the rally, which he called a “turning point” and pledged that white nationalists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
Like his allies Spencer and Heimbach, Duke has made no secret of his admiration for Russia, describing the country as the “key to white survival,” and has been pictured alongside Dugin.
Just Rich @JustMeRich
Replying to @splcenter
Trump is in the side of David Duke and the Klan. Further speculation isn’t needed.
Follow
Trevor Smith @MrTSmith81
And david Duke and the klan are on the side of Russia, where’s that list of people trump won’t attack again? White supremacists and putin.. pic.twitter.com/4Nricps1N7
11:16 PM - Aug 15, 2017
Duke once lived in Moscow and owns an apartment in the Russian capital, which he reportedly sub-let to U.S. Neo-Nazi Preston Wigginton, who has in turn hosted web chats by Dugin at the University of Texas A&M college.
On Monday, the college announced it was cancelling a planned white nationalist rally on its campus to be led by Spencer.
Russian state media has also given a platform to Spencer and Duke, where their extremist beliefs were not flagged, and they expounded their racist views unchallenged. Spencer has frequently commented on the Syrian civil war on RT, where he has expressed support for Russian ally and alt-right icon President Bashar al-Assad.
Dugin himself has frequently appeared on Infowars, Alex Jones’ pro-Trump conspiracy theory site.
Anton Shekhovtsov, author of Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir, tells Newsweek that ties between U.S. and Russian fascists were longstanding.
“There is no evidence that the Kremlin - as an official body - has ever tried to build ties with the US neo-Nazis such as Spencer or Duke. However, both have long-standing relations with their Russian fascist counterparts,” he says in an email.
In Europe, the story is different, with Neo-Nazis in Germany reportedly recruited by Russian intelligence via martial arts clubs, and Hungarian neo-Nazi István Győrkös, who shot dead a police officer last October, running paramilitary training camps for right-wing extremists alongside Kremlin officials.
In a blog posting Tuesday, former NSA analyst John Schindler explained the appeal of Russia to the U.S. far-right.
“Although our country has always had white supremacists, Russia has given them renewed focus and energy, as well as a ready-made worldview. This take on the world includes overt white nationalism which despises the United States as a decadent and multiracial society,” he wrote.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 02 September 2017 16:46.
In Tel Aviv with supporters where he announced that the Africans would be expelled.
New Observer, “Netanyahu Vows to Expel Africans from Tel Aviv: “We Will Return it to the Israelis”, 1 Sept 2017:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday visited a rundown Tel Aviv neighbourhood with a large African population and pledged to rid it of illegal “infiltrators” and return control of the suburb to Jews after the non-Jews were expelled.
According to a report in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, Netanyahu announced that “We will return south Tel Aviv to the citizens of Israel.”
“We are dealing with illegal infiltrators, not with refugees, but illegal infiltrators. And Israel’s right is to safeguard its borders and to keep away illegal infiltrators,” he said.
“If needed, we will legislate an amendment to the law or change the agreements with the African countries, or both.”
Speaking with residents, the Netanyahu also promised that the government would step up enforcement against asylum seekers ‘in the face of those who employ them, in the face of the lawless infiltrators.”
Netanyahu made reference to the border fence on Israel’s frontier with Egypt, built to halt the influx of African invaders, saying that if it had not been built, there would be a million Africans in Israel.
The prime minister said he intends to convene a ministerial committee that would meet on a monthly basis with Israeli citizens and officials to deal with the issue. He was accompanied during his visit by Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev.
The Prime Minister’s Office said the purpose of the visit was to “identify with the residents and hear about their distress against the backdrop of the high court decision.” Netanyahu’s bureau said he intends to push for legislation “that will provide a response to deal with the distress from labor migrants following the criticism expressed by the Supreme Court.”
According to data from the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority, there are about 38,000 Africans in Israel including about 27,500 from Eritrea, 7,900 from Sudan and 2,600 from other African countries.
The flow of Africans into Israel has been halted entirely, with only one getting caught attempting to cross the Israel-Egypt border this year. In addition, in the first six months of 2017, about 2,100 Africans have left Israel after being detained in the desert concentration camp of Holot.
Streets around the central bus station, including almost all of Levinsky Park, were closed off for the Prime Minister’s visit, as he met with local residents.
Culture and Sports minister Miri Regev, who once infamously referred to the migrants as a “cancer” said while accompanying Netanyahu that “the residents of south Tel Aviv are the ones who became refugees in their own country.”
“We need [criminal] enforcement against the employers who pay the salaries of the infiltrators they employ,” she added, referring to those that do not have work permits.
Related Story:
New Observer, “Israel Will Forcibly Deport all Non-Jewish Illegal Aliens after Court Ruling, Government Says”, 31 Aug 2017:
The Israeli Justice Minister has announced that Israel will shortly be introducing a law which will forcibly deport all non-Jewish illegal aliens—including all “asylum seekers”—from the Jews-only ethnostate following a High Court ruling in that country which approved Israel’s current deportation program, but limited it to those “volunteering” to leave.
According to a report in the Jerusalem-based Times of Israel, the High Court of Justice on Monday allowed the Jewish ethnostate’s government to continue with its policy of deporting all illegal invaders from Africa back to Rwanda or Uganda—irrespective of their original country of origin—but said the state cannot jail those who refuse to go for more than 60 days.
The Jewish judges unanimously rejected a petition by human rights groups against the deportation practice, but said that the “deportations could only to be carried out with the agreement of the illegal aliens.
Previously Israel had detained “refugees” in an open prison in the middle of the desert for up to 12 months, imposing such harsh restrictions upon them that many chose to be “voluntarily deported” just to get out the Jewish state.
The Times of Israel further reported that following the new court ruling, Israeli officials said they would amend the law so that the invaders could be deported without their consent.
“The High Court removed from the state the ability to pressure the illegal infiltrators,” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was quoted as saying. “It turned the [migrant’s] lack of cooperation into a reward. We will fight this until we achieve the necessary results.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed his justice minister up, saying that “We will need to pass a new law that will permit us to enforce these agreements,” adding that this was one of a three-pronged policy against the nonwhite invaders.
The other two include the fence built between Israel and the Sinai to “prevent infiltrators” and the agreement that Netanyahu worked out with Rwanda to facilitate the deportations.
The Israeli policies are in contradiction to the “open borders” policies endorsed and propagated by all Jewish organizations, synagogues and religious bodies in non-Jewish countries in Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
At the same time, all of these Jewish bodies support Israel. The hypocrisy is too blatant to be coincidental, and must be deliberate: Jews support “open borders” for non-Jewish countries, but “closed borders” for their own country.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 29 August 2017 12:20.
Michael Cohen, liaising with the Russian Federation.
Washington Post, “Top Trump Organization executive asked Putin aide for help on business deal”, 28 August, 2017:
A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.
The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.
“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled.
“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.
Click to page showing Trump-Russian links
Cohen’s email marks the most direct outreach documented by a top Trump aide to a similarly senior member of Putin’s government.
Cohen told congressional investigators in a statement Monday that he did not recall receiving a response from Peskov or having further contact with Russian government officials about the project. The email, addressed to Peskov, appeared to have been sent to a general Kremlin press account.
The note adds to the list of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials that have been a focus of multiple congressional inquiries as well as an investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III exploring Russian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin intervened to help elect Trump.
Cohen’s email to Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests.
Cohen told congressional investigators that the deal was envisioned as a licensing project, in which Trump would have been paid for the use of his name by a Moscow-based developer called I.C. Expert Investment Co.
Cohen said that he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015. He said the Trump company began to solicit designs from architects and discuss financing.
However, he said that the project was abandoned “for business reasons” when government permission was not secured and that the matter was “not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Cohen’s request to Peskov came as Trump was distinguishing himself on the campaign trail with warm rhetoric about Putin.
Cohen said in his statement to Congress that he wrote the email at the recommendation of Felix Sater, a Russian American businessman who was serving as a broker on the deal.
In the statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Cohen said Sater suggested the outreach because a massive Trump development in Moscow would require Russian government approval.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 16 August 2017 17:33.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair. (AFP)
Times of Israel, “Yair Netanyahu says leftists more dangerous than neo-Nazis”, 16 Aug 2017:
Echoing Trump, PM’s son claims ‘thugs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter are getting stronger’ while Nazis are a thing of the past.
The son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said American left-wing groups are more dangerous than neo-Nazis.
Weighing in on the weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, during a far-right march, and US President Donald Trump’s controversial statements that “both sides were to blame” for the deadly incident, Yair Netanyahu said he was far more concerned by leftist organizations that have recently come into public focus.
“To put things in perspective,” Netanyahu wrote on Facebook, “I’m a Jew, I’m an Israeli, the neo nazis scums [sic] in Virginia hate me and my country. But they belong to the past. Their breed is dying out.
“However the thugs of Antifa and [Black Lives Matter] who hate my country (and America too in my view) just as much are getting stronger and stronger and becoming super dominant in American universities and public life.”
The Israeli premier himself tweeted Tuesday that he was “outraged by expressions of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism. Everyone should oppose this hatred,” after he was criticized for staying silent on Charlottesville.
In a response Wednesday afternoon to Yair Netanyahu’s comments, sources close to the prime minister said, “Yair is an adult and his views are his alone”
Trump’s stance was also supported by Likud MK Oren Hazan, who said Tuesday that the president “is right. Violence and extremism on any side is forbidden and demands condemnation. That doesn’t matter to the bleeding hearts on the left and in the media. After all, they believe that only the right is extremist and violent.”
Other Israeli politicians - from left and right - have been far more critical of Trump’s position, some more directly than others.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett has called on US leaders to denounce the rally’s “displays of anti-Semitism.” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of Bennett’s Jewish Home party has urged prosecution of neo-Nazi activists.
Yesh Atid chair MK Yair Lapid and Zionist Union number two MK Tzipi Livni explicitly criticized Trump’s equivalence.
“There aren’t two sides,” Lapid said in a Wednesday statement. “When Neo-Nazis march in Charlottesville and scream slogans against Jews and in support of white supremacy, the condemnation has to be unambiguous. They represent hate and evil. Anyone who believes in the human spirit must stand against them without fear.”
Livni said “When it comes to racism, anti-Semitism and Nazism, there are never two equal sides. There’s good and there’s evil. Period.”
Trump sparked a political firestorm Tuesday when he doubled down on his initial response to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that ended in bloodshed, saying there was “blame on both sides.”
The Republican president — who the previous day solemnly denounced racism and singled out the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as “criminals and thugs” — also hit out at what he called the “alt-left” over the weekend melee.
Trump has faced days of criticism from across the political spectrum over his reaction to Saturday’s unrest in the Virginia college town, where a rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists over the removal of a Confederate statue erupted in clashes with counter-demonstrators.
The violent fracas ended in bloodshed when a 20-year-old suspected Nazi sympathizer, James Fields, plowed his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, leaving one woman dead and 19 people injured.
In a rowdy exchange with journalists at Trump Tower in New York, Trump made clear on Tuesday that he was fed up with continued questioning about the issue.
“I think there is blame on both sides,” Trump said.
As he spoke, his new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a former Marine general, appeared displeased during the president’s long tirade, standing rigidly.
“You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now,” Trump continued. “What about the alt-left that came charging… at the, as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?… There are two sides to a story.”
“What about the fact they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. As far as I am concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments were immediately welcomed by David Duke, a former “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan and a key figure at Saturday’s rally.
“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists,” Duke tweeted.
Torch-wielding white supremacists march at the University of Virginia on August 11, 2017 (Screen Capture/ YouTube)
But on the political left, the president’s words were met with indignation.
“Charlottesville violence was fueled by one side: white supremacists spreading racism, intolerance & intimidation. Those are the facts,” said Tim Kaine, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate and senator from Virginia.
The state’s other Democratic senator, Mark Warner, tweeted: “No words.”
Trump’s fellow Republicans also didn’t mince words.
“We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive,” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wrote on Twitter.
“This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”
When asked why he waited until Monday to explicitly condemn hate groups present in Charlottesville, Trump said he wanted to be careful not to make a “quick statement” on Saturday without all the facts.
“I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct,” Trump insisted.
Trump called Fields, who has been charged with second-degree murder, a “disgrace to himself, his family and this country.”
But he also said that while there were troublemakers at the rally, there were also many people there “to innocently protest and very legally protest” the removal of a “very important statue” of Confederate general Robert E Lee.
“I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?” he said angrily, referring to the fact they owned slaves.
“Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? … You’re changing history. You’re changing culture.”
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 10 August 2017 05:06.
Breitbart, “Eighteen Convicted in Mostly Muslim Rape Gang, Police Paid Child Rapist Informant £10k”, 9 Aug 2017:
Seventeen South Asian men and one Caucasian woman have been convicted of involvement in a mostly Muslim sex grooming gang operating in Newcastle, in the largest case of its kind since Rotherham and Rochdale.
The gang was found guilty of nearly 100 offences, including the rape and human trafficking of vulnerable women and girls. They preyed upon teenage girls with drugs and alcohol at sex parties known as “sessions”, Chronicle Live reports.
The police have come under strong criticism for paying almost £10,000 to a convicted child rapist to work as an informant in the case.
“We’re appalled to learn that police paid a child rapist and planted him in the midst of vulnerable young girls”, - Jon Brown, NSPCC
The victims were aged between 14 and 22 years old. They were passed around by their abusers and were sometimes said to be too intoxicated to even know what was happening to them.
One victim said she had been to 60 such “sessions”, the BBC reports. She spoke of seeing two older men at one of them with a woman who seemed “frightened and scared, like a slave”.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 07 August 2017 05:02.
Mike Cernovich is exposed as being at best a dumb vehicle for Active Measures, as his #FireMcMaster hashtag is botted and propagated hundreds of thousands of times by the 600 most active Russian fake Twitter accounts ...
John Ziegler confronts Cernovich with that and Cernovich’s conspiracy theory nonsense - that Soros* is pulling McMaster’s strings - Cernovich quivers nervously and makes the feeble counter-allegation that ‘Ziegler is anti-Zionist; just like McMaster.’
* We have long observed that Soros is a convenient Jew for other Jews to throw under the bus, particularly the more ardent Zionists.
John Ziegler (25:55): Are you claiming that you alone are the reason that #FireMcMaster has been re-Tweeted at last check over 600,000 times worldwide - you’re saying that’s because of you?
Mike Cernovich: Amazing, the great citizens out there who support “America first”, participating very active, there was a protest today in front of The White House, the people are showing up…
John Ziegler: No, Mike, let me tell you the facts. That happened because of Russian operatives on Twitter.
Mike Cernovich: They’re everywhere, oh my god, the Russians. Imagine you talked about Jewish people the way you talk about Russians? Or you talked about Israel the way you talk about Russians?
John Ziegler: Are you anti-Semitic?
Mike Cernovich: You sound anti-Semitic and you sound xenophobic, because to me you’re xenophobic of Russians, an entire race of people…Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia…
Do you hate Israel the way McMaster does?
John Ziegler: You don’t want to answer the question because its troubling for you.
Mike Cernovich: McMaster hates Israel, do you hate Israel the way McMaster does? He fired pro-Israel Jews, he fired a guy for going to a Bar Mitzvah in Israel. Do you support that decision by McMaster?
John Ziegler (27:15): Are you denying that the 600 most well known Russian operative Twitter handles are responsible for the re-Tweets of the hashtag #FireMcMaster and that it was the top re-Tweet for all 600? Are you (Cernovich) denying that?
Mike Cernovich: I categorically deny that.
John Ziegler (29:03): “Here is my assessment; unless you’re totally lying and since we’re on the phone and we’ve never talked before in any substantive matter so I can’t know for sure; but my sense is that you are not actively working on behalf of Russia; but that Russian forces see you as somebody that they can use because he is so dumb he doesn’t realize he is being used and effectively you are being used as a stooge by Russia to do their dirty work for them among certain elements of the American population, i.e., the Trump cult.
That’s my belief, why am I wrong?
Mike Cernovich: Well my belief is you’re being used by anti-Zionist forces to support McMaster’s attacks on Israel and that’s why you support the purge of Jewish Trump supporters from the Trump administration.
John Ziegler: So you just think it is a coincidence that Russia is behind the fact that the #FireMcMaster hashtag has been re-Tweeted hundreds of thousands of times?
Mike Cernovich: I’m behind hat, I came up with that.
John Ziegler: Donald Trump, when he Tweets, if its a good Tweet, it might get 20,000 re-Tweets. #FireMcMaster has been re-Tweeted over 600,000 times world-wide because of you and you alone?
[...]
You think it’s beautiful that the President said, basically, you’re wrong, I’m not going to fire McMaster?
You implied on line that you did not believe that Trump wrote the statement that supported McMaster.
Mike Cernovich: No, Gen. Kelley definitely wrote that. I don’t believe Trump wrote that, it doesn’t sound anything like him.
John Ziegler: So, you don’t believe Trump is in charge then?
Mike Cernovich: Trump delegates a lot of things.
John Ziegler: Delegates a statement of his personal beliefs about McMaster, his National Security Advisor?
With that, thanks for your time, and I’ll be happy to send you the link to the entire interview un-edited.
Cernovich and Milo, Shills for the (((Trump agenda)))
That’s Mike Cernovich, a conspiracy nut-job, who has become famous in the Alt-Right by being a Donald Trump supporter, who no longer wants to be known as a Donald Trump supporter but is still doing the work for Donald Trump, although Trump is rejecting that work on the issue of whether National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster should be fired; if you understand all that, you’ve been listening very carefully and I appreciate it.
Related Story: From the week before, Ziegler does a good job exposing Milo Yiannopoulis as a mercenary stooge for Trump, brought onto Breitbart by Bannon and backed by Robert Mercer’s agenda and money. Milo did not promote the interview, which he would tend to do if he thought he came off well (he didn’t, his arguments came across as highly prefigurative, ill-fitting and mercenary for Trump).
In Tel Aviv with supporters where he announced that the Africans would be expelled.
Michael Cohen, liaising with the Russian Federation.
Click to page showing Trump-Russian links
Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair. (AFP)
Cernovich and Milo, Shills for the (((Trump agenda)))